Oh, and his show was funny.
I find it interesting that in this day and age of edgy comedy, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW still airs like 18 times a day and gets good ratings. There still is a place for warm gentle humor set in small town America with characters who had a genuine affection for each other -- a place free of cynicism and vagina jokes.
Ironic that this comes a day after my Cosby post. Like Bill Cosby, Andy Griffith involved himself in all the show's scripts. But unlike Cosby, he treated his writers with great respect and they stayed with him for years.
Much older readers remember Andy from his bumpkin Air Force private in NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS. If you haven't seen it, rent it. Imagine Woody Boyd from CHEERS only ten times funnier. (And the film features a cameo by a young struggling actor named Don Knotts.)
And if none of this sounds familiar, they mimicked his voice for Huckleberry Hound.
For years Andy lived in Toluca Lake in the San Fernando Valley in a nondescript house on a corner. Just one of the neighbors. A friend who lives in Toluca Lake said one Christmas Eve he heard carolers and wandered outside to see. There they were on a flatbed truck going through the neighborhood.. Led by Andy Griffith. Would you expect any less?
If there was a Mayberry they would surely have a 4th of July parade today. Even as everyone fought back tears. Because a celebration of America is a celebration of Andy, and that's worth a parade, a picnic, and fireworks... as long as Barney isn't lighting them.
58 comments :
This is slightly morbid, possibly, but every time you write a memorium for someone,and I think to myself 'Ken should collect all of these into a book.'
I love the way you tell stories, and your tributes are always and without exception beautiful and touching.
Thank you, Ken. Well said.
Sadly,if they don't remember What It Was Was Football, they probably don't remember Huckleberry Hound, either.
Nice post, Ken. I'm rewatching "A Face in the Crowd", which shows just how talented Andy really was. As a NC native, the show is fixture in our culture--we even have a statue of Taylor and his son Opie in our park, which serves as a reminder of the innocence and delight that Griffith brought the the world.
There's not a Mayberry, but there is Mount Airy. The small town in western North Carolina was where Andy Griffith grew up and was the template for Mayberry.
They do have a Fourth of July parade today, as well as a an annual Mayberry Days Festival in late September.
http://www.visitmayberry.com/
Was too young to appreciate the message and the homespun humor of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW when I was a kid, but as I get older, it's great to be able to watch something and feel good about it, not so much because it recalls days gone past that we may never see again in this country, but because when you read (or watch) between the lines, the show tells us, in this hectic day and age, "Whoa! Slow down for a minute and take a deep breath! Let's see what really matters in our lives!" For that I'll always be grateful to Andy and his legacy.
Somehow, this says more about Andy Griffith and the 4th of July than anything else I've read about either one of them today.
I was in high school when The Andy Griffith show first was on I thought it was so cornball. I was a kid, what the hell did I know. The charm of this show grew on me as I aged and got smarter. I still watch it from time to time when I need cheered up. Who can resist the pickle episode.
As usual a beautiful tribute Ken! Here's a piece of trivia for you: although the show was set in "Mayberry", the opening, with Andy and Opie headed to the fishing hole, was actually shot in Beverly Hills, in the hills just above the Beverly Hills Hotel!
Outstanding tribute!
His show was known as "The Andy Griffith Show" because at that time, I believe, the actors were bigger than the medium.
Thanks for a great tribute Ken.
I loved the Andy Griffith show as a kid and still enjoy it when I can. I think it reflected an America at it's best. And if that's not how it really was for all of us, it should have been.
One of my Dad's favorite movies is No Time For Sergeants. It used to play on TV quite a bit in the sixties and seventies. It became one of my favorites too. It was so good that I still laugh out loud just thinking about some of the scenes. I read the play it was based on. Funny, but Andy made it hilarious.
We're losing our true icons at too rapid a pace now-a-days and I don't see many taking their place. Andy Griffith lived a good long life, but it wasn't long enough for me.
Aloha
Very nice indeed. As I said yesterday, you don't have to be an asshole to succeed.
I caught some of the Andy Griffith Show last time I was in LA (for your sitcom weekend, no less, Ken) and I found it utterly charming, even now.
The Andy Griffith Show is one of, I believe, 3 sitcoms to end their run at #1. The others are "I Love Lucy" and "Seinfeld." The fact that AGS did it in the tumultuous spring of 1968 says even more. RIP Mr. Griffith
The best years of The Andy Griffith Show are (arguably) the first five seasons, before Don Knotts departed. That was almost fifty years ago, yet the show is still on, and we all revere Griffith, Knotts, Howard, and the rest of the cast for creating such a wonderful show. I can't begin to imagine a show that is on right now (or that has even been on in the past 10 years) that will still be watched and loved in 2062. Have we become so cynical that we've lost the ability to create a show like that, or was The Andy Griffith Show just a happy accident that can't be recreated?
Although I go waaaayyy back I hadn't heard Andy's stand up until I got Sirius radio. Every so often they play his routines. I hadn't expected to like them but found myself entranced in the way he slowly and methodically 24 edsorespun the story. He played it country but with underlying deep intelligence. His Shakespeare routine, done in the same style, is hilarious.
Marv W
As noted yesterday: The Bill Cosby Show (1969-71) was itself a show with "warm gentle humor" (and no laugh track, remarkable at the time). Knowledge of how Cosby related to the writers on that series would be of interest. I would want to ask Ed. Weinberger, who evidently was involved in both this earlier series and The Cosby Show (which I have always avoided), whether he was driven away from the latter and how long it took (assuming he did leave), and how The Star had changed in the intervening 13 years (if he had).
Very nice tribute, Ken.
If "fame and fortune" simply magnify the qualities already inherent in a person, then it's obvious Andy Griffith was a genuinely good guy.
Fun fact, Ken Berry, who starred in Mayberry RFD, was also in the TV show of No Time for Sergeants. Neither was a fit substitute for the Griffith original.
And thanks to those who suggested looking up Andy's standup. YouTube makes research so simple, and in this case fun.
The Andy Griffith Show has always been on my short list of all time best TV series. Andy Taylor was originally conceived to me a much more comical character, I understand, but Griffith wisely morphed himself into the straight man for Barney, Otis, Floyd, Howard, and the Darlings.
Am I crazy or is Modern Family today's equivalent of TAGS? Both shows are made up of characters who clearly love each other despite their flaws. Both tell stories without raunch. Both are truly funny. Both capitalize on the physical comedy talents of the actors. And both neatly wrap up each episode with a warm little lesson for we viewers to take away with us (without feeling like it's a Sorkin ramming it down our throats).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBuPQgV8yBM
As a young child in the 50's I listened to Andy Griffith's comic routines on records. No Time for Sergeants came from one of his early routines. I will have to see if I can find a modern version of the records.
Everything you say about Andy Griffith is consistent with what I know from spending two days with him working on a shit variety show in Montréal (a city I'd never seen before). It was 1977. I was an as green as they come TV comedy writer. I'd only met a couple of celebrities prior to him, but no one of his stature. I was shocked at how genuinely nice he was. Andy was at a low point in his career, and seemed to be slightly depressed. He asked me, the show’s lowly nothing writer, to lunch - which is amazing all by itself. We were in a restaurant and engaged in a conversation. Just me and him and some ever-present mute chaperone/chauffeur named Richard O. Linke (sp?) , his manager. Anyway, what I marveled at was no one paid any attention to Andy . I'm pretty sure nobody knew who he was. We're talking, and I'm telling him a true personal experience story that was actually a good story and leading up to a big finish. As I talked, and got into it, he kept leaning in closer and closer to my face as he got more engrossed in the story. At some point, something in my head snapped because the face watching me and being so obviously entertained by me suddenly became Sheriff Andy Taylor because it was Sheriff Andy Taylor. And I suddenly felt like I was in the Andy Griffith show. I became mentally paralyzed. I couldn't finish the story. And said something ridiculous to indicate the story had ended. He did not embarrass me, and seemed understanding. We spent time talking about his history as we drove around Montréal taking in the sights. One of the things he did on this show was a comedy routine (unlike you, I was oblivious to the fact he did stand-up comedy). He was in front of an audience and simply told some folksy stories to people many of whom were probably French-speaking and there simply because the tickets were free. He was completely at ease. Totally in his milieu, as opposed to the crap I wrote for the show, And he was great. But he did not seem any different than when he was telling me stories those two days. From my perspective, he was doing the incredible. He was simply being himself. It's not something I will ever forget.
Wonderful piece. But two slight notes of correction:
1) Daws Butler was already doing that voice on radio back in the late 40s, and then in Tex Avery cartoons in the early 50s, before H&B created Huckleberry Hound. There is a resemblance, to be sure, but he was not imitating Andy.
2) Knotts was not a struggling actor at the time of SERGEANTS. He had already become a star in 1956 as a regular on "The Steve Allen Show," and had actually worked in soap opera before that.
Friday Question: Ken, I just finished watching a Frazier episode where Martin eats a pot brownie by mistake. While the episode is very funny, the depicted behavior of someone being "stoned" would only convince someone who had never been stoned in their lives.
It got me thinking that I rarely (in comedies anyway) see drug behavior depicted in any way close to true life. I wonder (1) have you ever had to write a "stoner" dialog and (2) have you ever seen a comedy depict getting high in a way that folks who have/do get high would identify with and relate to?
I believe it was 1969...a family summer road trip from Chicago out to the west coast. We stopped in Vegas and our parents wanted to take us kids (ages 9, 8 and 4) to a family-friendly show.
So we all dressed up and headed to the late Circus Maximus at none other than Caesars Palace for the dinner show; Andy Griffith, Don Knots, Jerry Van Dyke, and Up With People.
Yep...Sheriff Taylor, Barney Fife, and Stacey Petrie played Caesars.
Ben Kubelsky...it may have just been the turmoil in the real world of 1967-68 that made people turn to the idyllic Mayberry as escape. Relating to that, another author on TV brings up something so many may never have noticed--in Mayberry, there are no black people, even in menial roles.
The writer feels that the people behind the show felt the best way to deal with civil rights and related issues was simply not to acknowlege their existence at all.
Phil in Phoenix...not to mention Hooray for Everything!
Several years ago, the TV Academy screened the live TV version of NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS (made for the U.S. STEEL HOUR). It was really well done (kudos to director Alex Segal).
THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW would make my top five of all time. As others have mentioned, it still holds up beautifully.
Even if he sold out his age group for lefty politics, he still will be remembered as the Andy Griffith Show and Matlock.
I'm guessing Spy Hard won't hurt him.
I've never seen The Andy Griffith Show, not so much as a single episode. I just never cared for homespun rural sitcoms, and I couldn't stand Don Knotts. (And Aunt Bea was a dead ringer for my 5th grade teacher.) But I recall No Time For Sergeants vividly, a very funny movie. I recall a few of Andy's stand-up routines, and always ejoyed them.
I've seen at most three or four Matlocks. I am only 62, far too young for Matlock's demographic. My mother loved it.
A Face in the Crowd is a classic. (And it repeats on TCM tomorrow night at 10:45 PM, at least on the west coast. Check your local listings. I've set the DVR to re-enjoy it.) "Sweet Dick" Whittington always says A Face in the Crowd is his favorite movie. He certainly was always careful to know when his mike was on and when it was not.
Allow me to reiterate Cadavra's comment re: Huckleberry Hound. Daws Butler was a dear friend of mine, and he had indeed been doing that voice long before anyone ever heard of Andy Griffith. Some of his voices were impressions of specific performers: Snagglepuss was his Bert Lahr for instance (Daws did a record once of Snagglepuss narrating The Wizard of Oz. Since he was already doing Bert Lahr narrating, he did the voice of the Cowardly Lion in his Ed Wynn impression), and Hokey Wolf was his Phil Silvers impression. (His Phil Silvers voice showed up in a lot of his Fractured Flickers voices also, once as the voice of a character who was a clear, intentional parody of Walt Disney. They had their fun at Jay Ward.)
Daws was always very upfront about when a voice began with an impression. He used his Eric Blore voice a lot also. In the published biography of Daws: Daws Butler Characters Actor by Ben Ohmart and Joe Bevilaqua (in which I am mentioned twice, my last name misspelled both times as "MacKewon" both times), Daws recounts that the voice of Huckleberry Hound was based on a next door neighbor of his wife Myrtis back in North Carolina, which explains the similarity of accent. Huckleberry was more laconic and laid back than Andy Griffith.
Andy's standup routine on football is easily heard online. I known this now because I saw it posted on Facebook yesterday about 12 times.
The picture of he and Opie warning folks to be careful on the 4th now seems just off the mark. Apparently it was the 3rd of which Andy needed to be wary.
"Mike said...
Even if he sold out his age group for lefty politics,"
Lefty politics is not "selling-out" his age group; it is protecting theirs and everyone else's rights from the right-wing loons currently doing their best to rape America.
I LOVED the football routine. A Face in the Crowd is a jaw-droppingly good movie coming from an actor I had only seen as Andy Taylor and Ben Matlock.
Thanks, Ken. Happy 4th!
I heard that back in 1988 they took a poll to see how AG would do against Jesse Helms in a Senate race. AG came out ahead, I think 48-39. I would have loved to see Senator Andy Griffith.
Dang, I guess I knew there had to be at least one person out there who couldn't stand Don Knotts, and now I guess we've found him. :)
IMO, Barney Fife is one of the two or three greatest characters created for the small screen.
I wouldn't say the Griffith show was "rural," by the way. Most of it seemed to take place within the Mayberry city limits.
I've loved Andy and the Mayberry since my childhood, but I was recently reacquainted to Andy Griffith via XM radio. On one of the comedy channels I've listened to two different monologues of his, one one MacBeth and the Other on an Opera. He makes them funny and understandable. He will be greatly missed.
He cut an ad for a bill that guts Medicare, particularly Medicare Advantage.
Anonymous, Andy Griffith attached his name to his political views. Which were, by the way, far more honest than yours.
"jbryant said...
Dang, I guess I knew there had to be at least one person out there who couldn't stand Don Knotts, and now I guess we've found him. :)
I wouldn't say the Griffith show was 'rural,' by the way. Most of it seemed to take place within the Mayberry city limits."
Speaking as a native of Los Angeles, an actual urban city, Mayberry is "rural." DOWNTOWN Mayberry is rural. There was nothing "urban" about it.
When you can walk from City Hall to Ye Olde Fishing Hole, and do so in five minutes, you're rural. When your entire "city" population fits in one high school auditorium with seats left over, you're rural. When your city has only one barber, you're rural. When your city police force is two guys, one of them useless, you're rural. When everyone in town actually knows the names of the entire population of the town, you're rural.
As for Don Knotts, I really don't see how anyone could stand his irritating schtick. I booked him onto the Whittington radio show as a guest once back in 1974 when I was producing it. He was the only guest Dick ever dumped off the air halfway through the interview. You should have seen Don's face when Dick said: "Well, we know you have to leave early. Sorry. Thanks for being here," and cut off Don's mike before he could say: "I don't have to go anywhere," because it was news to him. It wasn't my decision to dump him off the air; it was Dick's, because he was the most-boring interviewee we ever had on.
Andy Griffith was interesting as well because he was talented as an actor, and knew to not play the same role (look at the movies before Mayberry) nor was he just a stand-up comedian or entertainer who was drafted into sitcoms. While I understand he had a dry period after Mayberry, he was still challenging, for example, he surprises in 1976 in Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" along with John Houseman, directed by Stacy Keach.
As the reviewer states:
"....it is Andy Griffith who gives the most surprising turn. Griffith deliberately uses his well-known amiable television persona, then reveals it as a mask that hides a menacing man within."
"Latrine...."
His TV show was great but of course his most towering artistic achievement remains his first film, "A Face in the Crowd." He delivered one of the two finest performances of the sound era in that one (the other being Mickey Rooney in Frankenheimer's live television broadcast of "The Comedian"). Long after "The Andy Griffith Show" has been ultimately forgotten, that movie's reputation will have grown exponentially.
What it was, was football:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh_I6wEgRvk
Should add that Griffith was of the Jack Benny school, not only valuing his writers but his supporting cast. Sheriff Andy spend a lot of time affably (and expertly) playing straight man to everybody else. Also, keeping his own character so laid back and sane put solid ground under the wilder bits by Barney, Otis T. Bass, etc.
D. McEwan, you say you've never seen The Andy Griffith Show. It's fine if you didn't think Knotts was funny, but then, that doesn't say a whole lot if you've never seen him in his most celebrated role.
Also, maybe Don was a bore that day on your radio show, but he was an actor after all, and I assume you didn't give him any script.
I've sat through large portions of several of his ghastly movies. The only one I ever made it all the way to the the end of was The Apple Dumpling Gang, and he was not the primary star of that, beng essentially a straight man to Tim conway, whi IS funny, and only in a supportng role anyway, plus a close friend of mine who died shortly before the film was released was in it, any any second of screentime for him then was precious to me. I saw him once or twice on Three's Company, and many times on Steve Allen. Frankly, he was a large part, a VERY part of why I avoided The Andy Griffith Show. I had, after all, never seen Andy in anything where I did not like him.
Yes, Don had no script for the interview we did with him on the radio. Being an actor is not an excuse for being a bore. Ray Milland was on our show. He was not a bore. Nor was Lucille Ball or Dennis Weaver or Jack Lemmon or Groucho Marx or Avery Schrieber or Gore Vidal. This list goes on and on. Only one actor was so dull, so lifeless a "personality," that Dick, not I, made the decision to cut his losses and dump Don off the air and play records for half an hour instead: Don Knotts.
And I never said he was not funny. I said I found his schtick highly irritating and did not enjoy him. I'm told there are people who think The Incredible Mr. Limpet is funny. I'm sure that with proper medication, these people can lead comparitively normal lives. But whatthey see in him is beyond me.
I've visited Mount Airy, and I highly recommend it for Andy Griffith fans. There's a Floyd's barber shop and a Happy Dinner - birthplace of the famous pork chop sandwich. The house Andy grew up in is now a bed and breakfast so you can sleep in the Andy's bed. The visitors center also includes displays for the famous Simese twins and Donna Fargo. A restored police car drives though town and there is a replica of the jail. Sure, its touristy, but still fun!
I'm sure a lot of actors are boring in real life. Maybe Knotts was one of them. But on the Griffith show he had the benefit of great writing, and so he never gave a boring performance as Barney. You'll just have to trust me on this, D. :)
What's truly amazing to me is that Knotts won no less than five Emmys for playing Barney, while Griffith never even got a nomination for playing Andy Taylor. Not one. For someone who was supposedly well liked within the industry, this is a head-scratcher. Perhaps his work was simply too self-effacing?
"I hear all those über smart Aaron Sorkin characters talk and think, I bet Matlock could outsmart 'em."
That is the quote of the week! Thank you, sincerely, for this post, Mr. Levine. Andy Griffith was a true treasure and will be missed, but never forgotten.
D. McEwan:
It's too bad you've robbed yourself of some great comedy by never watching The Griffith Show. It wasn't a rural show, it was a well-written, well-acted, perfectly-paced situation comedy.
But, then again, when you make a crack such as this:
"I've seen at most three or four Matlocks. I am only 62, far too young for Matlock's demographic. My mother loved it."
..and ask how anybody could love a true comedic genius like Don Knotts, that tells this mid-30s "Matlock" fan everything I need to know. I feel sorry for you. I really do.
Thanks. Yor pity is noted and logged. There's still plenty of great comedy out there that I do enjoy that is blessedly 100% Don Knotts-free, except for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (His sole appearance in my DVD collection), and he only taints a small bit of that.
What is your problem with my mother having liked Matlock? She liked whodunits for some reason. She had VHS casettes full of Murder, She Wrotes and that odd 1990s revival of Burke's Laws. When she died I had to dispose of about 1000 paperback murder mysteries she had accumulated: the entire works of Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, even Earl Diggs Biggers, etc.
And I never doubted that there was someone under 75 who loved Matlock. Now we know. It was you.
Stan Laurel, Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, WC Fields, Barry Humphries, Groucho & Harpo Marx, Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, these are "True Comic Geniuses." Don Knotts was a tiresome, irritating comedian who was inexplicably sucessful. You enjoyed him? Fine. Enjoy him. I will no try to stop you. But I can live quite happily without him. However, do not devalue the term "True Comic Genius" by applyng it where it does not belong. There's a big difference between "Professional Comic Who Makes Me Laugh" and "True Comic Genius".
I don't doubt that The Andy Griffith Show was a well-written, well-acted, and probably well-paced show. Andy was a highly talented man with strong professional standards. But that does not make it not a rural show. It WAS a rural show. Why deny the fact? Own it. I did not care for those. I skipped over Green Acres and Petticoat Junction also, despite the good will I always carried for Bea Benadaret from her work with Jack Benny and Burns & Allen. I never said any of those were not good shows. I said I did not care for them. I didn't and I still don't. I get not to like what I do not like, just like you get to like what you like.
I do not pity, you despite all the time you have spent watching those shows that you liked which you could have spent watching shows that I like instead. I do not require you to be me or to have my tastes instead of your own. Why do you insist I have your tastes instead of my own? Why is it that you can not stand the idea that someone dislikes Don Knotts and noticed that Matlock chiefly appealed to elderly viewers? (The show's demographics were pretty clear and unarguable.)
When I had Don on the radio show I produced, I was polite to him. I did not say to him "You know, I really can not stand your irritating schtick." Dick was, perhaps, a bit rude to him when he dumped him off the air after half an hour of desperately trying to provoke some sort of interesting or enteraining or at least non-soporific response from this "True Comic Genius," a problem that never occured when we had actual True Comic Geniuses on (Lucille Ball was not dull, nor was Milton Berle, nor was Groucho Marx), but I was nice to him.
(Oh, and while Mother also liked Three's Company - her tastes were weird - she did stop watching it when Don Knotts came on as a regular, because she couldn't stand him either.)
On July 18, TCM will air a four-film Andy Griffith tribute, led off, of course, by "A Face In The Crowd" (which by now probably rivals "North By Northwest" and "Casablanca" as that channel's most frequently run movie). But after that, and "No Time For Sergeants," at 9:30 PT, TCM will show a little-known 1975 film, "Hearts Of The West," set in '30s Hollywood, where Griffith plays an antagonistic character. The cast includes a young Jeff Bridges and the lovely Blythe Danner. Well worth checking out, and a reminder that Griffith was a solid actor.
Looking forward to seeing No Time For Sergeants again after at least 4 decades. I remember it as very funny.
Hitchcock always claimed that Psycho was the first American movie to show a toilet on screen, but the "saluting" toilets of No Time For Sergeants beat Psycho to the screen by a year. Bear in mind while watching it that the Broadway play that it closely adapts was written by Ira "Rosemary's Baby" Levin. Ah, if only he'd titled his novel The Boys From Brazil as "No Time for Hitlers".
According to Ron Howard, he was a very loyal and supportive boss. A lot of those writers on The Andy Griffith Show were also actors in the minor roles. He gave people chances and created a productive and enjoyable workplace.
D. McEwan Wow you really are unlikable, intolerant and long winded tool aren't you? You hate on the late great Don Knotts for being "boring" yet you are one of the dullest and most intolerant people I've ever seen. Maybe you should actually watch the Griffith show to see how to treat people with kindness and humility. That's of you can get past your hate for the rural.
@Michael Powers Hi, this is from 2021 and The Andy Griffith Show is still wildly popular and remembered. Sorry to burst your bubble.
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